Receivers in communication systems, such as Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) systems, apply error-correction techniques to received signals in order to remove erroneous data that may have been added to the signals during transmission. In general, there are two types of errors: those whose locations and values are unknown (random errors) and those whose locations are known but values are unknown (erasure errors). Error correction techniques may be used to correct random errors or erasure errors. However, in signals containing both random errors and erasure errors, increasing the degree of error correction for one type of error generally results in decreased error correction for the other type of error.